ideas about academia

In my never-ending search for something to say when people ask me what I'm going to do after my postdoc, I was thinking about what things bother me about the academic track.

The structure and climate of academic scientific research, in particular the egocentric, "independent investigator" model for scientific research, frustrates me. Why not a move toward project-oriented team-based models, where groups of scientists work together to address similar questions from different angles or with different techniques in an egalitarian community? There are clear advantages to multiple experts collaborating, rather than competing, on research questions as well as on training students and postdocs.

The current system also does nothing to capitalize on the increasing number of graduate students within the sciences (and I'm mostly thinking about biological sciences since that is where my experience is). Instead of attempting to retain these bright and highly motivated individuals, it pits them against each other. The individuals that win by securing tenure-track jobs in this system are clearly adept at networking, publishing, and otherwise making their name stand out from the crowded field (sometimes by being a great scientist). However, isn't it likely that many students, who either leave research in the midst of graduate school or opt not to enter the faculty job market after doing a postdoc, could contribute to the field if alternatives to the traditional PI faculty position were readily available to them?

This extends to a separate discussion topic, how to change the mood of the training environment (at the graduate student and postdoc levels) so that the prospect of leaving academia isn't construed as a failure on the part of the student. Given the glut of grad students and postdocs, and the paucity of faculty positions available at any given time, why aren't we exposed to other options and trained for them?